John Cook

Good afternoon! How's your Monday going? Curious about what "urban" teenagers were doing over the holiday weekend, and whether you should feel threatened by them and people who share their complexion? Then be sure to check in with the Drudge Report, which has conveniently rounded up a slew of run-of-the-mill summer crime stories that happen to involve black people and suggestively weaved them into a nationwide race riot.

One of the things about really hot long weekends is that people tend to congregate in public spaces and celebrate. Often they will consume alcohol. Young people, being unencumbered by family burdens, are often over-represented at these festivities. And since black people constitute roughly 12% of the U.S. population, they can usually found at such celebrations.

Since young people in large groups often make poor decisions, particularly when they've been drinking, holiday weekends often result in an elevated number of white people being arrested for criminal behavior and a proportionally smaller, but still elevated, number of black people being arrested for criminal behavior. But since the president of the United States is a black man, and since black voters tend to align with his party, it is to the advantage of the Republican Party and its allies to inculcate fear and apprehension about people who look like him. Hence the top stories on the Drudge Report today:

The race-baiting is a bit more transparent—"urban," "rib fest"—than we've come to expect from Drudge, who is usually more elegant in his efforts to stoke white rage. All of Drudge's readers in the media business, the cable news producers and Politico reporters who regard him as "America's assignment editor," know exactly what his intent is with those headlines. But instead of being dismissed as a racist weather-obsessed recluse he continues to be regarded as a power player in right-wing politics.